


Walk my way, I'll share the things she won't

by heavenisalibrary



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 20:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5553488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times River Song dug up history before she lived it, one time she was glad she didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walk my way, I'll share the things she won't

I.

River finds the broach encased in dirt older than even she is beneath the shattered stone arch of the temple she’s excavating. She imagines it must’ve been dropped before the earthquake reduced the city to rubble, and sunk deep enough that it wasn’t destroyed in the catastrophe that followed. Or, she supposes, turning it over carefully in her hands as she sits on her cot a few hours later, it could be more than meets the eye. Perhaps she misidentified the stone, and it’s something more indestructible than she’s ever encountered before. Or perhaps it’s protected somehow; she doesn’t believe in magic, that was always her mother, but she’s seen the furthest stretches of science and technology in her travels, and knows enough to realize anything is possible.

At any rate, she decides it doesn’t need to make its way into the catalogue of things they’re going to ship to the school that’s commissioned her, at least not until she properly knows what it is. It could just be a lucky little thing, but she’s never believed in that, either.

The next day she finds a skeleton further down in the mud, one hand outstretched as though they’d been holding the broach when they died, however that had happened. 

River doesn’t think anything of it until she ends up running for her life with a small team of scientists through the same temple a few hundred years in the past, and one of her people gets their foot stuck in a sinkhole as the ground starts to shake and rubble starts to fall from the roof of the temple. River’s been carrying the broach since she found it — she tried not to think about why she felt compelled to do these things, because she knows if she analyzes it the timelines will become clear, and she’d rather have an inkling of what’s to come than a step-by-step guide — and so she knows she can’t do anything but offer it to the man as he struggles against the sink hole, kissing his forehead and tucking it into his hand, promising it’ll bring him luck. She can tell he knows she’s lying, so she squeezes his hand harder, and is grateful that the people on this planet haven’t got any telepathic capabilities, because then he’d be able to read the truth in her thoughts. _I’ve held your bones_ , she thinks. _I'm sorry, but you’ve never been anything but a ghost._

Then, she hurries out of the temple with the rest of her team, listening to the sound of stone crashing to the ground and the deafening silence when he stops crying out for help.

II.

Sometimes, when she gets a job she knows will be particularly difficult, she cheats. She hops into the future and digs up the results of what she know will become her plan, making maps and schematics and hewing together rough theories of how everything fell as it did before she does it. River knows it’s the sort of thing that would give him indoors a coronary, but that doesn’t bother her much. Mostly, it makes her laugh when he stumbles into her plans, not knowing what she already knows.

Once, he finds her in the middle of a war on a distant planet, commanding her armies from the keep of a castle. Dodging the arrows is easy enough; she’s always been a soldier, after all. He’s not so impressed by that, even if she spends all of her time in between barking orders grabbing the sleeve of his blazer and dragging him out of the line of fire while he mutters criticisms and advice. She heeds him when she ought, but sometimes she can tell he’s annoyed with how little she’s listening to him. As the battle goes on, his mouth gets progressively more Scottish. She wants to tell him that she’s not doing it to frustrate him, but because she knows what she will do, because she’s peaked at the answer sheet. But she knows that’s the sort of thing that would send him flying off the handle, so she just pokes and prods at him with a smirk and winks at him when he gets particularly distraught, and she can see his shoulders relaxing. Unfortunately, she gets so distracted by keeping him distracted that she doesn’t realize they’ve stepped onto a stretch of the keep that won’t be there in a few hundred years. And since the kingdom their in lives in peace up until the planet’s swallowed by the sun in a few thousand years, she has a good sense that they ought to move. _Now_.

“Move a little to your left, darling, would you mind?”

“I would mind,” he says. “Just because you’re the general doesn’t me you’re the boss of me.”

“No,” she says, her fingers drumming against her leg as she resists the urge to shove him. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the soldiers on the other side loading a catapult in the distance. “Being your wife means that. _Move_.”

“But I won’t be able to see —”

“ _Honestly_ , why must you always make everything so difficult? I spend so much time saving you, imagine what I could do if you just listened straight away. I could get my nails down, possibly a massage. Ooh, _sweetie_ , I could do those roots!”

His eyebrows arch crossly and he opens his mouth to say something but she’s out of time, so she shoves him hard as she can, and he stumbles far enough away from her that when the boulder crashes through the keep and knocks out a few feet of the wall, he’s left on his ass on the other side of the gap, staring at her, dumbfounded, as she brushes the dirt off of her trousers.

“You could’ve told me you were _cheating_ , dear.”

“As if you haven’t done it a time or two hundred,” River says.

“Stupidly dangerous — if I’d’ve known, I would’ve —”

“I _know_ ,” she says, rolling her eyes. “That’s why I didn’t tell you until you were no longer able to get to me. Now, be a good boy and stay out of the way until mummy’s done at work, hm?”

She walks away from him, laughing to herself as she hears his furious mutterings as he stalks off to do as he’s told.

III.

River loves a bit of drama. So when she’s standing in the great hall of a city precariously perched on an overlarge meteor, speaking to all of the citizens about emergency plans, full well knowing that in approximately five minutes they’re going to collide with a bigger meteor and everything’s going to go to hell, she knows she shouldn’t, but she just can’t resist.

River knows that a large section of the meteor will survive, many of the buildings and people improbably in tact, and they’ll eventually move on into the sky and settle into a much larger planet and hundreds of generations in the future be a very populous and influential race. She also knows that the great hall she’s standing in will become a major tourist attraction, and because she knows that, she knows that standing at the podium carved into the hard rock of the meteor itself, none of the overhead beams will crash into her, and the podium will stay standing. So when the world starts to shake and people start to panic, she stays put.

The meteors collide, part of it ricocheting off into space — she’d tried to warn them, saved a few when it was easy enough, but bad luck to everyone else — most likely to disintegrate or collide into something bigger and badder not long after. Everything shakes and the people scream. Some run out of the great hall into escape pods, but she knows some will stay. And those that do look to her for advice. She probably should offer them some. She’ll dig some of them up in the wreckage, though, years later, so she doesn’t want to risk disturbing bones-to-be, and besides, being concerned with the welfare of strangers has never really been her forte.

And then there’s the fact that she can’t resist the visual.

The whole thing comes down around her ears and she stands at the podium, leaning against it insolently and eying the nails on her hand. The ceiling collapses, the walls give in, and she lets it all happen. She gets a bit of dirt and dust on her dress which is a shame, and one bit of support beam lands perilously close to her left foot, but all in all she’s unscathed.

So when the dust clears and those who survived stand from where they were hiding, the meteor still shaking slightly beneath their feet, she’s standing right where she started, utterly unscathed. Probably it wasn’t the most responsible thing to do, but _oh_ , it was fun.

Years later, the Doctor takes her to the museum built on the site of the great hall, and she tries not to look too smug as he prattles on about the mysterious, indestructible divine figure who stood at the unmarked podium and inspired dozens of religions in years to follow. Well, she _mostly_  tries. Sort of.

“Sounds like you have a bit of a crush, honey,” River says, casually glancing over a write-up of the con job that had brought her to the meteor in the first place. It’s mostly wrong, but it is sensational with quite a bit of kissing, so she isn’t too cross.

“Well, wouldn’t you?” he enthuses, blowing his ridiculous hair out of his face and grinning at her. He must realize that he sounds silly because he straightens, tugging at his bow tie. “I mean, she sounds fine. A bit brilliant, and probably not actually indestructible, although I can’t fathom how she’d have known to stand right at the perfect place to withstand any harm without some kind of divine influence, not that I believe in that, although from these accounts of the impact her mere _presence_  had on the people, even before this tiny miracle, maybe I do a bit — oh, _River_ , maybe she had time —”

He stops abruptly, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Do go on,” River says. She can’t help but grin.

“You’re insufferable,” he says. “And brilliant. But _insufferable.”_

_“_ And possibly divine, according to you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

IV.

River clears her throat, and the Doctor whips his head around to glare at her over his glasses frames, letting them slide down his nose.

“What?”  he snaps.

She sighs. “I just wouldn’t press that button if I were you.”

“It’s not a button,” he says, turning back to the interface he’s hovering over. River rolls her eyes, making a mental note to emphasize in her diary how hard work this version of him is so that she avoids him on days when she’s feeling more inclined to go with her programming as opposed to against it. “It’s a complicated alien telepathic interface with a bit of old-god magic and —”

“You hover your hand over the control panel and telepathically trigger the proper response which _magically_  — although it’s just a different sort of science, really, honey, _magic_? — relays your needs to the mainframe and does what you want.” 

He turns around to face her again, blinking.

“It’s a _button_ ,” she repeats. 

He blinks at her again owlishly, his mouth puckered in that strange way this face does when he doesn’t quite know what to say but can’t admit it, and then he turns away from her again, still eying the button, or Asgardian approximation thereof, speculatively.

“It is a _bit_  magic,” he mutters crossly. “And I _need_  to press this button. It’ll open the skylight in the east corridor and siphon the explosion into the atmosphere saving —”

He stops abruptly, turning to face her again, looking even more irritated than before. She misses bowtie, who she could’ve distracted with a kiss, or grandad, who knows well enough to listen to her. _This_  him looks at her like he resents her, and he wears sand shoes. Two strikes. When he doesn’t speak, she realizes she must’ve made another noise of distress while he was talking. She sighs.

“It won’t work.”

“It won’t — what? _What_? Why not? I’ve done the math. I’ve worked it out. It will work.”

“Well,” River says, and then leaves it at that, because he appears to be working himself up into the sort of temper tantrum this him so delights in, and she doesn’t want to knock on his ego any further. 

Okay, well, that was a lie — of course she does. “It should work. I’ve done the math too, and by all accounts you’re right.”

“ _So_?” he says, stepping up to her, getting close to her as he dares, whipping his glasses off and shoving them in his pocket as he eyes her. “Will you let me get on with it before the whole building bursts into flame and stop making those _sounds_?”

“It _should_  work,” she says, “but by all _historical_ accounts, it doesn’t.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m an archaeologist, remember?” River says. “I’ve been to this site. The building’s going to burn down.”

“Not if I —”

“— which you obviously don’t, because the building burns down.”

He deflates. “That’s not — you can’t — _River_ , that’s cheating.”

She shrugs. “No one can resist peaking at the answer sheet when it’s just out there in the open on the world wide web.”

“But you — you — you can’t _do_  that.”

“I can and I did,” she says, finally losing her patience. She reaches for his hand and grabs it tightly, ignoring the way his fingers tense against hers and tugging him out of the room. “You know what else I know?”

“Not sure I want to.”

“Oh, you do,” she says, tugging him along faster. “You know what leading Asgardian experts blame for the building ultimately going up in flames?”

“What?”

“The explosion of the _magic_  circuitry in the control room.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he says, picking up the pace as she drags him out of the control room and hurrying to run along behind her. “You know,” he shouts as they round a corner, “I thought this was supposed to be a picnic!”

“Picnic, running from living flames in a building about to go up in flames at any minute,” she says, “a date’s a date, sweetie.”

When she glances back at him, he’s grinning, and his squeezes her hand in his, and she thinks she can forgive him for questioning her judgment and maybe even favor him with a kiss when he drops her off, assuming they make it out alive.

V.

River’s read a lot on the topic of the Singing Towers of Darillium. She reads a lot about her own life in general, partly because she loves a good adventure story and she’s more than a little impatient, but mostly because she knows most of it to be absolute rubbish. As an archaeologist, she’s got infinite respect for the profession, but those who research without time travel to check their facts, well — their resources are limited. So she reads them for a laugh and she reads them to keep score, and mostly regards them of fiction.

Except, of course, for the Singing Towers. 

She read about them quite early on, really. One of the first things she’d read that mentioned her in connection with the Doctor. River Song, the woman who married him, notorious mad woman and most feared warrior for three systems over, the author wrote, had her final night with the Oncoming Storm on Darillium. She tried to ignore it, but there was that problem where she was part  Time Lord, and so she’d read it, and she’d just felt it. A timeline in the back of her mind pulled tight and taut, strung up and ready to play. She looks for more accounts of their last night, after that, and the more she reads, the more it seems like it’s not just _their_  last, but _her_  last. It scares the living daylights out of her, and River Song doesn’t _get_  scared.

So she reads more. She hides pages and pages of theories and research and accounts of bystanders in a safe behind a picture in her bedroom so the Doctor never finds it, amassing as much information as she can manage. By the time she’s a Professor, the idea has settled with her, she’s made peace with it, and she thinks she knows all there is to know. She knows he’ll take her to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. She knows they’ll have dinner at a restaurant, the most sought after table in the galaxy. She knows he had a hand in the building of the restaurant. She knows before it existed, a starliner crashed there, and she imagines he had something to do with that too. She knows they’ll spend the night, and he’ll say goodbye and go on to be an awful, useless grump for a few dozen years before sorting himself out. She doesn’t read about where she goes, after. That much she doesn’t want to know. 

River asks him to take her to Darillium, over and over again. Not because she wants it to end, but because she knows there are adventures he’s been on that she hasn’t, and she can’t stand the idea of it being a proper end. Let the history books record it as her last; as long as she knows it isn’t, she can handle that. She’s always preferred her ends to come somewhere int he middle, anyway. But he won’t ever take her. He changes his mind at the last minute, he comes up with ridiculous excuses, he distracts her with his hands and his lips and his words and imaginary mechanical issues with the TARDIS he needs her to help him fix, and she realizes he knows, too. 

Still, her diary gets fuller and fuller, and then suddenly she’s walking out of the TARDIS into the restaurant, and she knows this is it. She’s long ago become accustomed to knowing the outcome before experiencing it, and this is no different. She changes her clothes and gives herself a little shake and reminds herself that no blow lands as hard as it could’ve when you know it’s coming in time to dodge it, at least a little bit.

She never thought to look into the length of a night relative to an earth year in all of her studies. River admits to him, a few years in, lying in the dark with her head on his chest that she’d read all about Darillium, that she’d thought their final, singular night was fixed and all they had, that she’d been looking for ways around and under and over it since she’d first realized, but it had seemed completely impossible.

“ _Almost_  completely impossible,” he corrects, kissing her head.

She’s never loved the word _almost_  so much in her life.


End file.
